Of course we want an MLS franchise! In spite of the many objections on the project that Mike Stone’s group has proposed, we are:A: for all things that enhance healthy living in San DiegoB: for all high minded business opportunities in our sport space

Seems to me that about covers it.

Are there details? Yes, of course. For instance a group of San Diego’s community leaders have decided to try to do something really good for San Diego, all of San Diego, namely take our very ugly, no longer useful gigantic parking lot called Q Comm, and turn into high density housing, park land, space for S.D. State to add student housing and an athletic facility for a co share with an MLS team… to the benefit of all…except competing developers who don’t like the idea that another team of Community leaders and investors have taken the hardest step, the first one!

Oh, all this at the public cost of zero.

Of course there is push back. After all, San Diego is comprised on San Diegans. Everyone needs a voice…but with the voice comes the responsibility to provide constructive criticism so that we can actually make something happen. Tilting at windmills with statements like “we can do better” or “lets not rush to action” all fall into the “delay and pray” category.

I guess “praying” is a strategy but not a very effective business strategy. Look, we are a world class city. A small minded, self serving, PR catastrophe of epic dimensions, our NFL owner, elected to leave town. This hurts me, but honestly the NFL is really on the slide. Mothers are opposed to football... who wants their child to be exposed to brain injuries in a physically elite, brutal sport? The antidote to football …”football,” known as soccer here. Soccer is an aspirational sport, safer by far, embraced by boy and girl athletes at every level. Its GLOBAL, its big here, and we need it as a badge of our dedication to our life style.

But it cannot succeed in a vacuum. The MLS franchise in Carson has low support because it is in the middle of an industrial area... no hotels, no restaurants or bars, no reason to be there.

The opposite is true in Seattle and Portland…those franchises are robust and healthy because they are where the action is. I can easily see Mission Valley and the Q-site easily becoming a hub of life and with it all the benefits of a growing and active community.

There is a time frame and some constraints. We are moving along a time frame imposed by the MLS expansion calendar. Its easy to imagine that the timeline is imposed by the developers…”if we hurry up and rush this through, we can put one over on San Diego”…really?

So my belief is that's it time for our community elected officials to step up and throw their support behind the total effort to bring MLS San Diego. Lets make the deadline, get the signatures, get started, and enhance the effort as we move forward. “Pray and Delay” will just put QComm into the perpetual motion machine, where no one wins, in fact all San Diegans lose!